Long before plastic and radioactive garbage filled the oceans, Opabinia patrolled the seafloor, snatching up soft prey with her trunk and then shoving them into her backward pointing mouth on the underside of her head.

Saturday, December 5th, 2015

“Ain’t I seen you before? I think I remember those eyes, eyes, eyes!”
- Usher

Unlike her sister paravians, Yi qi was too cool for pennaceous feathers, sporting absolutely none (unless they somehow failed to be preserved with her remains). Instead, she evolved a “styliform element,” made of bone or at least calcified cartilage, extending from her wrist to help support her membranous wings as she glided, if not soared, through the forests of Middle and Late Jurassic China.

Note: Colouration based on authors' analysis of melanosomes (pigmentation organelles) preserved in the fossil.

The largest carnivore to ever walk on terra firma, she preferred fish to dinosaurian flesh and the water to life as a land lubber. On a sadder note, her holotype specimen was destroyed during the night of April 24th, 1944 by a Royal Air Force bombing run on Munich, a solemn reminder that we humans would perhaps much rather prefer to destroy this planet than learn a darn thing about it.

Though Deinocheirus was originally known only from her enormous arms (exceeded in size only by Therizinosaurus), two new skeletal remains (this time more complete) described in 2014 (after being successfully recovered from Mongolian thieves) helped shed some light on this previously enigmatic animal, such as her now-confirmed (at least partial) piscivory, though she remains quite an enigma. Unfortunately, in attaining huge size, she has lost the speed and intelligence of her smaller relatives.

As big as an elephant, this ground sloth was one of the largest land mammals of all time, exceeded in only size by Paraceratherium and some proboscideans. Sadly, she still proved no match for the most dangerous mammal of all: humans.

Originally thought to be a xenarthran mammal until 1891 (hence the grammatically incorrect Greek genus), this giant predatory bird hunted her prey with terrifying speed and rapid dorsal-ventral cuts from her beak and likely serrated mouth and tongue, similar to modern vultures, petrels, and her more famous dinosaurian antecedents such as Allosaurus fragilis.

Originally thought to be a xenarthran mammal until 1891 (hence the grammatically incorrect Greek genus), this giant predatory bird hunted her prey with terrifying speed and rapid dorsal-ventral cuts from her beak and likely serrated mouth and tongue, similar to modern vultures, petrels, and her more famous dinosaurian antecedents such as Allosaurus fragilis.

A (more) southern relative of the woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius), the Columbian mammoth sadly is also no longer a resident of our home planet. Whether he’s a victim of climate change and/or overhunting by North American “native” humans (Both the mammoths and humans migrated to North America from Asia by crossing the Bering land bridge) remains contested.

The largest carnivore to ever walk on European soil, she remained synonymous with her North American sister Torvosaurus tanneri until a new analysis in 2014 discovered enough oral differences between them to warrant her own separate species, in this case named after the writer and illustrator of Dinotopia, James Gurney.

The largest carnivore to ever walk on European soil, she remained synonymous with her North American sister Torvosaurus tanneri until a new analysis in 2014 discovered enough oral differences between them to warrant her own separate species, in this case named after the writer and illustrator of Dinotopia, James Gurney.

It was a long, long time ago, on the night of Saturday, August 24th, 2013. It was my fourth day of university, and that night they had numerous activities set up around campus to welcome all the incoming freshmen/women. One of the activities was customizing a design for a transparent cup (the design was on paper and would be visible through the outer wall of the cup). Here, you see my customized design. It's supposed to be a silhouette of Django (from Django Unchained) riding atop his horse with a Ray Gun (from Call of Duty zombies). Meanwhile, the words of Leonard Nimoy (Spock from Star Trek) echo in the background...More than two years later, a lot has changed. Nimoy is now dead, along with Paul Walker, John Nash, Nelson Mandela, Robin Williams, Wes Craven, Brian Rickard (Yoteslaya on YouTube), and probably a lot of other people that I am forgetting to mention. ISIS became the new big threat in the Middle East. NASA found water on Mars. The Supreme Court legalized gay marriage in the US. Islamic extremists gunned down twelve heroic cartoonists in the streets of Paris in broad daylight. Numerous African American deaths at the hands of law enforcement gained notoriety in the media. Crimea became Russian territory. A refugee crisis arrived on European shores. Vladimir Putin sent Russian forces into Syria. The list goes on...It's amazing how quickly two years can go by and how much can happen during that time. I myself have changed drastically along with the rest of the world. As I get older and wiser and have to start thinking about post-university life, I will hopefully revamp the above design to create something epic... Hopefully with giant robots and dinosaurs... with lasers! Stay tuned... (ETA: Early 2016?)

This ancient predatory whale's strange name comes from the fact that her bones were initially thought to belong to some sort of enormous non-avian sauropsid (reptile for those less cladistically inclined). Having the strongest (calculated) bite force of any known mammal (about 16,400 pounds at her upper third premolar), she would have fed her young by biting open the skulls of juvenile Dorudon, another (smaller) ancient whale. (Source: journals.plos.org/plosone/arti…)

One of the largest carnivores to ever walk the Earth, she has evolved serrated, blade-like teeth (the "serrations" actually being deep folds: www.nature.com/articles/srep12…), adapted for slicing through flesh with ease. Sadly, her genus's original remains were no match for British WWII bombers...

One of the largest carnivores to ever walk the Earth, she has evolved serrated, blade-like teeth (the "serrations" actually being deep folds: www.nature.com/articles/srep12…), adapted for slicing through flesh with ease. Sadly, her genus's original remains were no match for British WWII bombers...

If you needed further evidence that the Linnaean taxonomic system is broken and needs replacement, then Old Bronty here is your Huckleberry. More than a century after her genus was synonymized with Apatosaurus in 1903, a new study in 2015 revalidated Othniel Charles Marsh's original description of Brontosaurus being phylogenetically distinct from Apatosaurus (Apatosaurus had a fatter neck). Brontosaurus lives again!

More than a century after Cope and Marsh first dug up fossils of this giant sea lizard, our view of her has changed drastically. We now know that she swam mostly using an asymmetrical tail fluke, was countershaded, and lacked a dorsal crest.